Bill
by meenist
Summary: Don't read me I'm not for you.


"I want to forget," she said, laying her head back between two large, flat pieces of metal. The doctor secured them against her temples and ears and looked at her, acknowledging her. She added, "Everything."

"I read your request," he answered, pressing something beside her head. She could hear stars as they flickered on about her skull, inside of it, alerting the machinery of moments in time she would eventually lose.

"So." she strained to see him, could only catch the sleeve of his lab jacket in her peripherals.

"So." he repeated, declared, assured. His arms were moving over her face, cotton elbows yawning and stretching like bored creatures, separate from the doctor. She could sense his detachment and insecurity. Doubt. It was for the best that something far more distant controlled this man's limbs as he set to clear her mind.

"Will there be trouble?" she asked, regardless.

"This isn't like the movies." He tapped a silver wrist watch. There was a larger, more suitable clock on the far wall, but he touched his wrist anyway. "It will take minutes. According to your profile, it may take up to twenty-five. Now. The procedure. It will be a bit disorienting. The first few moments will..."

His voice became an indistinguishable hum like so many others, poking her brain, at the soft spots, where she was still tender from the morning's recollections. She'd thought about it at dawn over coffee she didn't drink and tv she wouldn't hear. Was it right, to forget him? Certainly, if she was here. How many combinations of this mind trick had she seen? Movies, books, news, dreams. All of them had suggested clarity. Departure. Uncertainty, maybe, but necessity. Eternal Sunshine... she laughed at some personal irony. The doctor flicked at a juicy syringe.

"Vampire," she accused weakly.

"Don't worry," he chuckled. Was he bored? He was something. "I won't be drawing any more blood from you. This will set you to thinking." He pressed the sleek, cold sword through an abused vein. She gritted her teeth a bit, wanting to squeeze something. A hand. The fingers were long, sturdy. The pinky was skewed with some untreated fracture, the needle was a pencil, sharp tipped and ebbing, scratching lead over a cured wooden landscape.

"Bill..." she called the doctor.

He looked sad, far away. She thought he'd say, not for long. Goodbye, perhaps. Play along with me doctor. Play pretend. "No," he said.

She imagined she might wake up in a memory. Then, as she'd seen, the walls of her thoughts would fall in on her. They would crush the basement, the leather couch, the picnic table. She wouldn't miss them. Just like any other picnic table. Just one of thousands of leather couches. And she would find him, a single entity prancing amongst her thoughts as the machines struggled to wipe him out. Erase him. Like a drawing. Like a fantasy made of pencil or ink or paint.

With the arsenal of forgetfulness at her heels, she discovered a garden full of flowers. Each stem housed a bubble, with a picture. A memory, she remembered. And which flower to pick now? The air was heavy, and she learned she was a spectator amongst the loss. Snakes of writhing black crawled over petals of Tuesday, of Christmas, of last year. The movie theater, the beach, his room. They wilted the flowers with acidic legs, some breaking as they did, laying upside down and curled like arachnid corpses. She could not recall where they had been, because it was gone. She did not stomp them because she did not see what they had taken from her. The field quietly melted, and every beautiful flower she lingered on was soon sticky and brittle at once, a brown smudge like fertilizer for the rest of the children. When it was over, she looked upon the field, wondering why they had come here. Gaps between flowers. Mums leaning and with petals like tongues lapping at broken stems, licking wounds, eating decomposed cousins. Daisies folding, hiding, spattered black and shaking it off. There were never any thoughts of him here, because she no longer remembered.

It seemed much longer than the doctor had promised. She was tired. Her lungs caught fire with each... each what? It was a process of forgetting, she knew. Would she forget forgetting? She hoped, because it was painful. If it were as painful as him she couldn't recall. His hair, wild and thick, she grabbed it with her fingers. She wondered how she came to grasp at air. Had there been something there? Tiny legs, like toothpicks, she embraced to fall upon thoughts of weather, of common things. The taste of grass and apple and asian spice made her laugh. That day, the two of them had... she spit it upon nothingness. Disgusting. What was that? His sneakers were... His cat snuggled against her leg, but whose cat was it? His brother mistreated it--did that boy who kicked his kitten have any siblings? His fingers walked up her spine, paused, stroked comfort into her kidneys and her shoulders but that was a dream, a wish she had when she had been seventeen. She'd never felt that kind of touch.

She vomited sweets into the nothingness. Full portions, dry, wrapped, sparkling. The gummy worms were his favorite before she forgot that too. Then eyes, piercing brown discs, they stared across the cafeteria table and made her cross her legs, cutting off circulation to her waist, her thighs. She couldn't feel this way about him. She didn't know this creature opposite her, eating a salami sandwich but then that day was gone too. She would never see it again.

Lovemaking. Warm and passionate and familiar. Skin. Sighs. Hands upon hands upon hips and then lips and foreheads and closed eyes and when she opened them she was sleeping alone. She wept. She wept and wept for someone she had never seen, would never meet. If only. If only he would come to me. He did, to her side while she rested under his gaze. If only. If only he would come to me. He never would.

She coughed until she thought her heart might come up. Her throat was raw. Was he gone? He couldn't be gone, she still remembered him. She remembered some things. But what had she forgotten? What had she--

There was a boy. She had never seen this one before. He was small and awkward. He barely spoke, a tooth bright and false, skin prickling with adolescence, but he was firey and amicable, tight and insightful. He drew with steady accuracy, pressed his thick glasses up a bridge, a long, boney bridge like his fingers that swept over paper and canvas with brush and pen and washed meaning into life. Oh god, she loved him. Please tell me your name, she said to this creation. So I may come to think of you, when I wake. So I might never forget. He looked at her then, sharply. Had she offended him? I love you, he mouthed through tiny lips, with glistening tongue and pleading and wet eyes. She knew then, it was him. She could not remember him but it was him. Whatever she had gone through, whatever pain he may have inflicted on her could be forgotten. This feeling; nothing could force it away, written out. He passed her a note, written on... I love Sam so much my sternum hurts. And then, who wrote that? For what? What strange, beautiful words. Did the boy before her know? She had never seen this one before. He seemed struggling at consciousness. Should she get the teacher? He slammed open palms on the table, leaned close to her face. He kissed her, this boy she didn't know. He kissed her and she would never, ever leave him. For she knew, whoever this was, she would never meet anyone so perfect in life. The man she had forgotten must have destroyed her. She would be rid of him, now. This fantasy would sustain her. This boy that never was.

When she awoke she was gone. The doctor waved a hand over her face, at her lifeless, staring eyes. He looked over his notes, his recordings, his measurements. She was alive, she finally looked at him as he touched her hand. Something in the print out was amiss. Something large and important gone, erased. The machines couldn't find it; couldn't read it. Possibly, this human had meant so much.

"Samantha?"

She nodded, smiling.

"Who is William Moran?" he asked carefully, searching her face.

"I have no idea."

He scrutinized the flatness of her voice. "Who are you?"

"A ghost." she laughed at his anxiety. "It's all right, doctor. Whatever I forgot, I can't remember it."

He relaxed and released her head. She felt light; oh so light. There was nothing inside. He helped her sit up, rubbing her back in a comforting way, a flat handed stroking that irritated her skin but woke her nerves into tingling. "Lightheaded?"

"Very," she admitted, prodding her own forehead. Was the brain still there?

"Can you walk?"

"Can I ever!" she stood, wobbly, caught her balance and smiled for the first time in months. This was perfect. She paid the check, forfeiting any kind of material comfort with the bill. She said her goodbyes after a glass of orange juice to wake her spirit. Her husband was waiting outside in the car. He looked sick with worry, with dread.

"They wouldn't let me inside," he said, breathless. It seemed he'd been crying. "Why did you do this? Why did you--" he caught himself, on the verge of some revelation. He bit his lip and turned aside. Of course; he couldn't mention the memories. He'd probably spent the last half hour frantically destroying the evidence, or watching said action as the company took down all the... all the what? She'd never know.

"Samantha," he said, a hand on her shoulder. The car whined. "You didn't have to do this. I never... I never said..."

"Let's go home," she said to his sadness. "I'm starving."

His lip quivered but he knocked the car in drive. He pulled out of the complex looking thin, looking distraught. So many things about him she could barely decipher. It must have been connected to the pain, somehow. Yet, all she felt was happiness. There was no emptiness because what could be empty? What could she be missing? They really were thorough here. She felt nothing deeper than resignation, than contentment. The tears streaking down her love's face were lost on her. Perhaps he should visit the doctor.

"You aren't you, anymore," he muttered to the steering wheel. He glanced at her, hiccuping.

"I'm me."

"Just forget it." He turned away from her, from what was left of her, and drove home. He could not think somewhere, his love was loving as he wished for her. Someplace she'd never forgotten. Someplace she'd never remember.


End file.
